Leaked NewYorker Article on Tiger Global
https://anonymfile.com/NEEXl/tiger-global-draft-of-new-yorker-story-doing-the-rounds-in-nyc.pdf
TLDR: Tiger Global may pass soon.
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
I raised $10m+ from Lee Fixel years ago.
It was a done deal after a 20m phone call.
They did no DD themselves, just got PwC to sign off.
Only an analyst used to call every few months for data. We started ignoring them after a while.
Perfect invester experience to be honest.
A few summary points:
- LP risk is over exposed to VC funds (Tiger, for these LPs)
- Tiger has had abysmal investments and returns these last few years
- They've actively looking to pass on their assets to buyers where they can find them
- Lee Fixel, the most prolific investor they had left a few years back
- The fund has been led by Scott Shleifer; who has reported to been an alcoholic, hosts drug parties, and invests with very little DD/deep dive.
All in all, this is scary stuff. With Softbank and Tiger both seeing difficult times, this feels like the Lehman moment for the VC industry.
I have heard this scott shleifer name from Ashneer grover once as how he invested in bharatpe in just an hour call.
Their portfolio in ’21: Pristyn Care, Slice, Upstox, Spinny, No Broker, Mensa Brands, CoinSwitch Kuber, Vedantu, Apna, Grofers, BharatPe, Blackbuck, Moglix, Urban Company, ChargeBee, ShareChat, Groww, Infra.Market, and Innovacer.
Will be a big setback to all growth/late stage startup if they blow up.
Hope the portfolio outlasts the fund :)
How exactly will this affect the startups they've invested? They will sell their stakes only right? Theses startups will no longer recieve any funds further from TG, that's the only issue I see...
Damn, Cred had massive investment from Tiger Global in initial round. Shouldn't affect them now I guess
How will it affect other startups theyve invested in? They will only sell their stakes right?
Won't that trigger another valuation round for the organizations which are funded by tiger global. And based on the results, TG will either sell for profit or Loss their stakes, right?
Thanks for sharing. How can Tiger really stop New Yorker from posting an article? Insane
Yeah! Same question. Maybe some kind of Injuction?
It’s not surprising, to be honest. It’s a game of contacts. Someone higher up in the New Yorker team would’ve had a good connection with someone higher up in Tiger Global. The article could’ve been written by some editor which got discarded higher up in the chain of command.
Internal dynamics at technology investment firm Tiger Global have worsened as the firm’s limited partners continue their revolt against the firm. Significant investor withdrawals have continued in Tiger Global’s public investment funds through 2023 to date as limited partners sour on the firm’s investment judgement and capabilities according to four sources familiar with the matter. It has been widely reported that Tiger Global is looking to sell many of its startup investments to third parties and has hired Evercore to facilitate the process. Tiger Global’s investments in startups, which are long-term illiquid private investments.
« At that point, Tiger’s public funds will close up shop and as an LP, you will get completely screwed. Even if you look at their performance year-todate, they have generated less than half the return of the Nasdaq 100, their performance benchmark. » .
According to recently released data, they have also meaningfully underperformed the Nasdaq
In addition to its issues with maintaining investors in its public funds, Tiger Global has also faced troubles with the SEC. According to five sources familiar with the matter, the firm has been under investigation from the SEC with SEC representatives visiting the firm’s office overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park several times over the past year as well as engaging in questionings over Zoom with the firm’s portfolio managers Coleman and Shleifer. Global had offered its investors after poor performance in 2022. Some of the deleted emails and texts between Tiger Global executives went through various ways to extract more fee income from LPs such as by improperly inflating fund expenses that should have been allocated to Tiger Global’s management company .
Global may have felt pressured to engage in as performance plummeted. Lastly, an unusual item that has been noted by the SEC according to several sources is that Tiger Global never replaced its former General Counsel who departed from the firm in 2021. While Tiger Global does have several junior and mid-level lawyers on its team according to several sources, it is highly unusual for a $50 billion investment firm to not have a seasoned general counsel leading the legal and compliance functions.
« After flying in by helicopter, the investor, Scott Shleifer, drank so much with the duo that he threw up on Gross’s fluffy dog.» The LP noted, «All the diligence you need to do is read that page from that book. We are lucky that one of our investment officers showed that to us ahead of PIP 16 fundraising. The crazy thing is that we did some digging on the WeWork situation with some of our relationships and found out that Tiger actually put in a big anchor order in the WeWork IPO before it got pulled. They just consistently make the wrong call in high-profile blowups.» In the current market environment, fund investors are looking to make safe bets in funds where they won’t face career risk.
As one allocator noted, «There will likely be folks fired at large institutional LPs who had pushed for large commitments to Tiger Global. No one at these institutional LPs would step up now and push for additional investment in Tiger. Tiger Global have also noted that they still do not believe they have gotten the full story on the sexual discrimination settlement from Tiger Global leadership and believe the co-portfolio managers at Tiger Global are not being forthright. According to one Tiger Global LP, «They are always stressing ‘integrity’ in all their investor letters yet they weren’t honest about this settlement with us.
It makes me wonder if they’ve misled us in other areas as well.» The firm has recently experienced more issues with retaining its female investment professionals. » Last month, Connie Lee, Tiger Global’s only female partner on the investment team left the firm. Lee, who was the promoted to partner in the wake of the Tiger Global’s sexual discrimination scandal with a different female investment professional, generated strong returns as a short seller at the firm. Shleifer worked on detailed diligence of WeWork together.
While Lee had insisted they not move forward with an investment in WeWork, Shleifer ignored her recommendation and placed an order in the WeWork IPO anyways – something Shelifer did not quite often with the investment team. This would have been a disastrous decision had the WeWork IPO ultimately proceeded at the price that Shleifer offered. Shleifer through various messaging platforms over the years. Shleifer has been known to have other issues with female colleagues historically.
Global, Shleifer in recent years pushed out another senior female executive who he felt did not respect him enough or have his back. This executive assistant subsequently left to work at another New York hedge fund where the work environment has dramatically improved. Unfortunately, for Tiger Global’s LPs, it appears that the firm’s obfuscation and misleading is quite common. « It was unquestionably a terrible time for Tiger Global LPs to add more to TGI and TGLO.
While the legality of misleading LPs to think that Tiger Global’s portfolio managers had conviction in the public portfolio to get LPs to invest more while the portfolio managers themselves were withdrawing a portion of their personal capital from the public funds is unclear and an issue for lawyers and the legal system to address, it is the case that those that are familiar with this set of actions by Tiger Global have described them as unethical. » Tiger Global LP recently noted, «Being able to control the narrative can be super valuable.
^got this from an article summariser
This was always gonna happen. FTX, GoMechanic, Byju’s etc. etc.
Plus all the random Crypto fundings in 2020-2021
Welcome to the 9 page pdf every VC Fund is reading. And now it is on Grapevine.
💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
Doom is coming for the VC world very soon